Shell survival kit
Move around the terminal with confidence, combine commands with pipes, manage permissions and SSH keys, and write a safe bash script.
Beginner, 9 steps, about 7 hours
- Shell cheat sheet: everyday commands Get comfortable with navigation, files and help before anything else. Article CMP 0057
- Pipes and redirection: connecting commands Pipes are the core idea of the shell; practice chaining small commands. Article CMP 0049
- File permissions: chmod, chown and what 755 means Learn to read ls -l output so permission errors stop being a mystery. Article CMP 0050
- Environment variables and PATH Understand why a command is found or not found and how to change that. Article CMP 0051
- Slice and summarize text with grep, sort, uniq, cut, awk and sed Use pipes on real logs and files; focus on grep and sort first. Article CMP 0052
- Find the biggest files and folders eating your disk A practical script that reuses everything so far on a common problem. Script CMP 0060
- Set up SSH keys: ssh-keygen, ssh-copy-id and ~/.ssh/config Log in to remote machines without passwords before you start automating them. Article CMP 0053
- Safe bash script template with set ‑euo pipefail and trap Study each line of the template so your scripts fail loudly instead of silently. Script CMP 0058
- Turn a one-liner into a robust bash script: strict mode, options, logging, traps, locking and a schedule Capstone: grow a one-liner into a scheduled, safe script step by step. Article CMP 0265